The Aunt From Hell
If you haven’t read any of my prior posts, I came from a family of great wealth financially, but poverty-stricken emotionally. My brothers and cousins and I had to scramble—and compete—for the few crumbs of affection that fell from the table. It’s a pretty common theme among the rich. I have no idea what the percentage of “runaways” is, but I ran as far and fast from that world as I could. When we would drive to football or baseball games in my father’s Rolls Royce, I would sink down in the back seat so as not to be seen by the curious, even hostile stares coming from passing cars. I was ashamed and embarrassed to be part of that entitled arrogance.
The money on my father’s side was disappearing fast. Francie, on the other hand, was brilliant with her inheritance. Instead of squandering a fortune on horses and bad investments, she collected modern art with a great eye, and her collection became worth hundreds of millions; on Picasso, Modigliani, Bracque, and of course Matisse.
None of this explains how Francie evolved into what one best-selling author called “The Meanest Woman in Beverly Hills.” She seemed to relish in humiliating people. One anecdote of her desire—and ability—to devastate will stand in for countless of them: Francis Heflin, my mom’s best friend and the wife of the actor Van Heflin, arrived at the Brody house for a dinner party in what she thought was a beautiful designer gown. Frances opened the door to greet her, looked up and down at the gown and said, witheringly, “Francis, it’s not a costume party.”
Imagine walking into the party after that.
My relationship with her was frought, to say the least. All of us kids in the small friends-and-family circle were deathly afraid of her; she could strike at any moment, quietly and with devastating effect. It wasn’t until I reached my late 20s that I was able to stand up for myself, and our relationship changed from then on.
As wonderful as everyone thought he was, Sid was snakebitten in business. He and my father developed the world’s biggest shopping center in LA’s South Bay and sold it for a fortune in 1966. Sid convinced my dad to go in with him on investing all the profit in a startup company’s stock. It soon cratered to near zero, and their profit was completely wiped out. Imagine Francie’s reaction. He never lived it down, and when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1982, he stepped into their shower with a .9mm Beretta, put it in his mouth, and left Francie to find his crumpled body.
After my father died in 1997, Francie and his widow, Cynthia, had a falling out. Francie had seemed to like her for the length of their marriage, but with her brother gone, her true feelings apparently came out, and they stopped speaking. Not long after, my wife Anne and I went to a small family dinner at Francie’s house. She was coldly dismissive of something I said, after earlier humiliating my wife for some harmless remark (I think it may have been a grammatical error!). I stood up and told my wife she was free to get a ride home with one of my two brothers if she wanted to stay, but I was leaving; I had had enough. “Oh, don’t be childish,” said Francie sneeringly. Thankfully, my wife got up and left with me. It was the last time I saw Francie Brody.
My wife had the misfortune of one last run-in with her. Francie was putting my mom up at her house while my mom was going through cancer treatments. This while her abusive common-law husband was dying of his own cancer back at their home. Anne drove to Francie’s with a Peet’s frozen mocha that my mom had requested from her. Francie cut her off at the door and said she was not welcome to come in; even if Anne had spoken to my mom, she hadn’t cleared it with Francie. Through tears of humiliation, Anne implored her to check with her mother-in-law. Francie just said, “Please leave. Before you embarrass yourself.” You can’t make this shit up.
When Francie passed away a few years later, my wife and I were getting dressed to attend the service at her home—when we were informed that we weren’t welcome there, on Francie’s orders. She was, sadly but predictably, still sending vitriol from the grave.
Coming Next: The Birthmark